The Academic Minute features professors from top institutions around the country, delving into topics from the serious to the light-hearted, keeping listeners abreast of what's new and exciting in the academy.

On our Jan. 9 program, the labor expert William A. Herbert and the University of Arizona's Gary Rhoades join Inside Higher Ed's Scott Jaschik and the moderator Casey Green to discuss the implications of the National Labor Relations Board's December ruling, for higher ed collective bargaining generally and for faculty unions at private nonprofit colleges in particular.

The term air pollution might evoke images of an industrialized city with many factories with billowing smokestacks or a crowded freeway of cars pumping emissions into the atmosphere. But in today's Academic Minute, the University of Massachusetts' Richard Peltier reminds us that everyone should be aware of air they breathe.